Forty

On the day after I turned forty, I cried the entire day.

I described it in a letter to my best friend

as an ocean of gratitude.

I called it grief turned inside out; the opposite of it

folded back and over onto itself,

until it resembled something more pure

and more animal 

than I've ever known. 

And when this happens; when I am 

utterly undone, and gutted by love

from lack of sleep and too much wine,

it is no longer the tears of sorrow 

that reduce me 

to sobs that I muffle from the ears of the children 

in the kitchen where you hold me

and I thank you

for your love, for the kids, for my best friend

Herein lies the worship of love.

The terror of love. 

The dark church of love, lit by a single ray of sun 

through some ancient wooden door,

the same sun that lights the bottom of the dense forest floor.

This is where I look love straight into the eyes 

as if it were a lion, ready to take me in its jaws 

and spit me out, ready to destroy everything that I've come to have 

and to hold, and to believe about myself,

and for the first time in forty years,

I defend it